Technology
Why Scott Painter Is Selling His Beach House to Start a New Vehicle Software Company

Serial entrepreneur Scott Painter’s plan to construct an all-electric subscription automotive company called Autonomy has backfired, so he’s back on what he calls the “hardest build” of his profession.
While Autonomy will proceed to operate the small fleet of 1,000 cars it has amassed over the past few years (a far cry from its stated goal of 23,000), Painter is starting a recent company called Autonomy Data Services, or ADS for brief, he told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.
The recent company will provide a software platform and data to automakers looking to run their very own subscription services for electric, gas, recent and even used cars. Painter says he’s also in talks with automotive dealers, fleet operators and even firms that sell construction and agricultural equipment but might want to offer subscriptions. He says an early version of the service is already generating revenue.
Painter says ADS is in negotiations with multiple automakers, including three which have previously operated their very own subscription service. The company is partnering with Deloitte to run the service; ADS will get a share of the revenue as a software-as-a-service provider, while Deloitte will charge automakers (or other customers) for customizing the platform.
It’s one other twist for Painter, who has had a difficult few years. After stepping down as CEO of automotive retailer TrueCar in 2015 (a company he founded in 2005), he launched automotive leasing startup Fair, which has received greater than $300 million in funding from SoftBank. That’s over poorlyEarly investors accused SoftBank of leading the corporate into failure, and Painter ultimately resigned as CEO in 2021.
His last shift wasn’t easy either.
To make all of it occur, Painter had to persuade Autonomy’s investors, a few of whom were underwater when the subscription service never took off as promised.
“Our lenders had something called senior secured status; they could kill the company and try to liquidate the fleet” to get a few of their a refund, he says. But he worked with them to convert $32 million of debt in Autonomy into equity in ADS.
He also says he had to “do some personal digging,” including selling his $6 million beach house on Pacific Coast Highway, mortgage one other property and “sell a lot of assets I didn’t want to sell.”
“It was the hardest job I’ve ever done as an entrepreneur,” he says, describing the method as “hugging a cactus.”
Data takeover for a six-figure sum
Autonomy was already struggling last yr when Elon Musk’s aggressive price cutting destroyed it the worth of a small fleetmost of them were Teslas. (Painter, who knows Musk personally, says he tried to “instill in Elon the importance of being more predictable with discounts,” but to no avail.)
The problem this time is that the majority major automakers have already tried subscription services. And just about all of them have abandoned the concept.
Painter says that happened because automakers “didn’t yet have the fidelity or understanding of how subscriptions would work.” Because all of those subscription services from automakers were brand recent, he says, they didn’t understand how customers would behave. Would they subscribe for just a few months? Or a few years?
Without that information, it’s really hard to set prices, Painter says, which is why automakers have charged high prices for his or her subscription services, scaring customers away.
That kind of knowledge is one in every of the things it plans to offer through ADS. And it’s not only coming from Autonomy customers. Painter quietly bought the assets of bankrupt used-car marketplace Shift Technologies earlier this yr for lower than $1 million. In the years leading up to its demise, Shift bought Painter’s former car-leasing startup Fair, which had previously acquired Ford’s subscription service Canvas—returning the remnants of its former business to its own ownership—and Uber’s leasing service Xchange.
Data from all of those firms may be used to predict “how long people stay in their cars based on their customer cohort, what their FICO score is, how much income they have, and so on and so forth,” Painter says. That’s essential not only since it provides certainty, but additionally because the flexibleness of subscription services is attractive to customers with lower credit scores.
Painter says that as well as to customer data, he obtained all source code, patents, trademarks, and compliance and legal “work product” from these bankrupt firms, which he says should make it much easier for ADS to relaunch its business for patrons in recent markets.
In total, he says he received greater than a terabyte, jokingly calling it “an astonishing avalanche of sh—.”
“My IT people were just saying, ‘What are you going to do with all this?’ It just kept coming,” he says. But, he notes, the businesses that generated all that data “spent a combined $1 billion developing the software” he now owns and uses at ADS.
“I mean, when (SoftBank CEO) Masayoshi Son finds out that I managed to buy all of Fair’s assets and intellectual property for less than a million dollars, I mean, it’s just going to kill him,” he jokes.
And while he has raised $2.5 million in enterprise funding, the work isn’t done. “We’ve done everything we need to do to make (ADS) an investable business. Now we’re just looking for an equity partner who’s willing to put in $5 million to $8 million,” he says. “That gives the company two years to get up and running so it can continue to grow with Deloitte.”
Technology
Benchmarks meta for new AI models are somewhat misleading

One of the new flagship AI Meta models released on Saturday, Maverick, Second rating at LM ArenaA test during which human rankings compare the outcomes of models and select which they like. But it appears that evidently the Maverick version, that the finish implemented on LM Arena differs from the version that’s widely available to programmers.
How several And researchers He pointed to X, Meta noticed within the announcement that Maverick on LM Arena is a “experimental version of the chat.” Chart on The official website of LlamaMeanwhile, it reveals that the testing of the LM META Arena was carried out using “Llama 4 Maverick optimized for conversation.”
As we wrote earlier, for various reasons LM Arena has never been essentially the most reliable measure of the performance of the AI model. But AI firms generally didn’t adapt or otherwise adapted their models to higher rating at LM Arena-Lub a minimum of didn’t admit it.
The problem related to adapting the model to the reference point, suspension of it, after which releasing the “vanilla” variant of the identical model, is that programmers are difficult to predict how good it can work in specific contexts. It can be misleading. It is best if the tests tests – miserably inadequate – provide a shutter of strong and weaknesses of 1 model in various tasks.
Indeed, scientists on X have Stark was observed Differences in behavior From publicly to download maverick in comparison with the hosted model on LM Arena. The LM Arena version seems to make use of many emoji and provides extremely long answers.
Okay, Lama 4 is Def and Littled cooked lol, what a yap city is that this city pic.twitter.com/y3gvhbvz65
– Nathan Lambert (@natolambert) April 6, 2025
For some reason, the Llam 4 model in the sector uses rather more emoji
together. Ai, it seems higher: pic.twitter.com/f74odx4zttt
– technological notes (@techdevnotes) April 6, 2025
We arrived at Meta and Chatbot Arena, a company that maintains LM Arena to comment.
(Tagstotransate) benchmark
Technology
Trump delays the ban

Donald Trump has signed a brand new executive order “Save Tiktok”.
Tiktok will live to see the next day – at the least for now. On April 4, President Donald Trump signed a brand new executive order delaying the ban on a preferred social application by one other 75 days. The application was to darken in the USA on April 5.
The application, belonging to the Chinese company Bytedance, is now on the second extension in the first quarter of the 12 months. In 2024, President Biden signed bilateral laws of Ban Tiktok, citing fears about national security. Congress voted in a predominant means. Although Trump has signed the executive order to “save” the application, many questioned the legality of the movement. Like many president’s actions at the starting of his term, they complain that evidently he exceeds the authority of the executive office.
Trump announced his move to Stop the ban on social truthSaying that his administration remains to be working on the contract.
“My administration worked very hard on the Tiktok saving contract, and we have made great progress,” Trump wrote on April 4. “The contract requires more work to ensure the signing of all necessary approvals, which is why I sign an executive order to continue tiktok for an additional 75 days.”
Trump quoted his newly imposed tariffs to China as a key reason for detained negotiations for the buyer.
“We hope to continue working in good faith with China, which, as I understand, are not very satisfied with our mutual tariffs – necessary for honest and balanced trade between China and the USA,” wrote Trump. “It proves that tariffs are the most powerful economic tool and very important for our national security. We do not want Tiktok to go dark. We are looking forward to cooperation with Tiktok and China to complete the contract.”
This means a second time Trump entered to delay the ban. On January 2, just a couple of days after returning to the office, he signed the first extension to stop Tiktok, utilized by over 170 million Americans available to users.
The potential sales of Tiktok draws the major attention of the principal players in the business world. According to HillMany private equity firms, the Venture Capital groups and the best technological investors have introduced offers for a preferred application.
Among the firms, apparently in the mix are Blackstone, Oracle, Amazon – led by Jeff Bezos – and the founding father of Onlyfans Tim Stokely. Interest in purchasing Tiktok has increased, how uncertainty about its future in the US is always growing.
The application, utilized by 170 million Americans, is situated at the center of ongoing political and economic negotiations between the United States and China. Along with the upcoming pressure and deadlines, the possibility of selling opened the door to the largest technological and financial names.
Technology
Doge is supposedly planning Hackathon to build a “mega api” for IRS data

The Department of Government Elon Musk (DOGE) is planning Organize Hackathon next week Focused on creating a “mega API interface”, which is able to provide access to taxpayers, according to Wired.
Wired claims that Hackathon is organized by two Doge employees within the service of the inner rule – Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, who’re also the final director at the extent of Healthtech startups. Corcos reportedly said to others in Doge that his goal is to build “one new API to rule them all.”
This would facilitate cloud suppliers access to IRS data, including taxpayers’ names, addresses, social insurance numbers, tax declarations and employment information, which may very well be exported to external systems. According to Wired, the vendor of external parties managed parts of the project, and Palantir “consistently” grew up as a candidate.
“Basically, they are open door controlled by Musk for the most sensitive information of all Americans without any rules that normally secure this data,” said an anonymous IRS worker said.
(Tagstranslate) dog
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